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We intended to release this at the same time as The Hobbit premiere but my internet connection was doing funny things. I'm sorry that the quality is really fuzzy and has the strange extra several seconds of black; if anyone has tips on getting videos to upload to YouTube properly, please let me know!

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A few months ago, I sent my friend Julie an email: "So, this is probably going to sound crazy, but what do you think of trying to do a music video in Elvish?"

Most people, I think, would have either backed away slowly or rolled their eyes. Not so my geeky and talented friend.


She spent a while translating Into the West, the song sung by Annie Lennox in the credits of The Return of the King, into Quenya. She began with a version on the website Quenya 101, but took some creative liberties with the lyrics and pronunciation in order to fit the words to the music. Kelsey very kindly offered to accompany the song on the piano.

None of us really knew what we were doing. I was the techie; I used an old keyboard, a Guitar Hero mic, and GarageBand to record the song. We had to do three or four takes before making a recording that did not have any coughs, sniffles, or missed notes. By the end of the final recording that afternoon, Kelsey's hands were shaking and Julie kept taking deep breaths. It was rather funny in a not-funny sort of way, because they were uptight and nervous for a solid two hours of recording-- but I got to relax on my bed and listen to beautiful piano and singing all afternoon.

We got some very interesting background noises that I couldn't totally eliminate-- but it was an experiment! Experiments are allowed to go badly in the hopes that they actually go quite wonderfully.
Julie says that next time we're recording a song that is actually in her range.

The video was a TON of fun to shoot, even though I now know many things that one should never do with a camera. The shakiness... yeah... it's really bad... Hey, this was my first time making a video that doesn't consist of simply pointing the camera at my hands as I demonstrate an arts and crafts technique!

My favorite part of this project? (Besides hanging out with friends, learning to use awesome software, and being unabashedly geeky?) Listening to the song over and over as I edited the video. :)

By the way, the lovely red-and-blue dress was made by Laura Cook, whose blog Sew Many Seams is definitely worth checking out! This was the dress she made me in exchange for the Entwife jewelry.

Here's a little photoshoot we did:











Leave a comment if you think that Jules' singing rocks and that Kelsey's piano is awesome-- I'd love to show them your feedback!

I'm so blessed to have friends who do not think that my crazy ideas are too crazy to be considered. :) They jumped in full-heartedly!


Anyway, I'm being the techie person and doing the final parts of the project, and because of my busy schedule it will be around a fortnight or even longer before we are finished.

These pictures are just too much fun, however, and I can't resist teasing the Tolkienites who read my blog. YOU WILL LOVE THIS, GUYS.

Cuio nin mellyn!

HAMA: There is Éowyn, daughter of Éomund, his sister. She is fearless and high-hearted. All love her. Let her be as lord to the Eorlingas, while we are gone.

THEODEN: It shall be so. Let the heralds announce to the folk that the Lady Éowyn will lead them!


~J.R.R. Tolkien. Chapter VI: The King of the Golden Hall (The Two Towers, Book Three)

Eowyn is one of my favorite characters in The Lord of the Rings. She's such a strong shieldmaiden, a woman who has gone through so much and still remains truehearted, and her love story with Faramir is one of my favorite romances of the epic. It's a pity they left so much out of the movies!

I wanted to make some jewelry inspired by Eowyn and pulled this screencap from The Two Towers for inspiration. The circlet she wears at Theoden's funeral was my starting point.

image via

Eowyn doesn't wear much jewelry; here's the necklace and earrings that she wears in most scenes:

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I wish I knew how to cast metal and had the tools to solder precious metals... I'd love to make something like her necklace some day!

image via

It's hard to find good-resolution pictures of Eowyn's crown, but I just came across this one from an eBay listing. As it turns out, my necklace doesn't look much like her circlet.

This torc-like necklace is nonetheless inspired by Eowyn.

It's made with raw copper braided into a loose band and attached to a hammered wire. I obviously can't make flowers like the ones on Eowyn's circlet-- which look like gold with and aquamarine/sapphire inlay-- so I went with tiny teal leaf beads to imitate the star/flower design.

From the Dragon's Hoard by Shaylynn Rackers. 18x18 inches, charcoal and graphite.

This drawing was inspired by The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. In the book, Bilbo Baggins discovers that the dragon Smaug is mysteriously missing from his cavern hall and fetches Thorin and Company. The dwarves were at first hesitant, then delved eagerly into the piles of gold and jewels. They find beautiful weapons and gird themselves with armor. I imagine this taking place just before Thorin gives Bilbo the mithril coat.


A few weeks ago, Mom sent me a link to the Hobbit Design Contest. I love art and I love The Lord of the Rings and I'm completely hyped for the Hobbit movies, so several friends encouraged me to enter. Technically I wasn't even old enough to enter when the contest began, but I turned 18 before the deadline so it's all good. :) This is a worldwide contest and there are some SPECTACULAR entries, especially in the Characters and Creatures categories. Go check it out. I hope to be able to paint like those artists someday! Anyway, that is what inspired this crazy venture.

At first I wasn't sure what to draw-- and even now I'm surprised I didn't do a drawing of one of the characters! But I love intricate detail and I love designing jewelry, so I had decided to try my hand drawing a sword and putting in as much crazy detail as I could.

The drawing took a week of my free time (and then some! I wasn't very productive that week...). I listened to the entire unabridged Fellowship of the Ring, so I guess it took around twenty hours.


And now, some behind-the-scenes stuff...


When I first told my teacher that I was going to draw a sword and started getting very animated about weapons, she disappeared upstairs and came back with this beauty! She let me bring it home to use as reference for a week.

(A friend just told me that this dagger is a replica of the one that Harry tries to kill Peter Parker with in Spiderman II!)

A katana, sparring staffs, and a couple of awesome swords made their way downstairs, too, and we giggled over them for awhile. She was a black belt in Taekwando and did weapons training, although she doesn't remember any of the weapons' forms. (It was pretty epic watching her do a couple of basics, though). Then we talked for a long time, comparing my taekwando lessons with hers, and I wasn't super productive that class. :D




THIS.

I'd put the drawing in the securest corner of my bedroom (a two-foot square space by my desk). My littlest brother decided to play with some of my sister's toys. Which would have been okay, except that he got bored and apparently started spinning around on my desk chair. Which somehow fit into the two-foot space. And somehow, he fell over with the chair and the chair went SQEEEEEEK across my drawing. (I felt so bad for him, he was so sorry).

I wasn't too worried until I saw that the permanent gray color and the deep dent wasn't just on the blank space. It was on the already drawn sword guard.


The funny thing is that the dent was easy to disguise on the guard. It took less than an hour! However, the dent across the blank space was very difficult to deal with because my charcoal would not fill it in! I was able to darken up most of the streak (and make the tunic less detailed) but in certain lighting you can still see the shimmer from the compressed paper. It turned out OK, though.




A friend asked me to film myself the next time I did a drawing, so I did. If you feel like spending ten minutes of your life watching clips of me drawing, you are welcome to.

UPDATE:


AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! HOLY COW!

Check out the blog post about it here!

Frodo and Sam was my last honest-to-goodness pencil drawing. I was only 15 years old when I drew that (well, almost 16, but the point is that was over two years ago) and haven't done any large scale pieces since. I love pencil drawings, so I figured that it was high time to make a newer, better piece that can go into my portfolio.

Since this month is one of the craziest for me academically-- midterms in all subjects, long nights at my Chem I class, extra essays, the SAT and ACT, trying to do college tours, and waiting anxiously for my official transcript so I can apply to college-- as I was saying, in academics alone I am more busy than should be allowed, so of course I decided that now is the perfect time to do a big drawing! My logic is irrefutable!

I'm hoping to enter this into an art contest with a deadline in less than a week and have been spending every last ounce of free time drawing. (Literally. One night I was on a roll and stayed up until two in the morning drawing and was firmly convinced inside my head that it was only eleven o'clock). Unlike for Frodo and Sam, I'm not doing a portrait (the most fun yet also the most challenging) but this piece is definitely pushing me artistically in other ways.

I probably won't be blogging until I get this project finished-- I hope it turns out as wonderfully as it appears in my head. If it does, 'twill be kinda epic. If not, that's typical! Hang tight and I'll blog again soonish. :)

This circlet is made from thick braided copper wire. I nearly killed my fingers making it-- I forgot to order dead soft wire and instead got half hard, which is not easy to bend when you are wrangling six three-foot strands around a vise!

There are around twenty five or so Czech glass leaf beads in sundry shades of green and iridescent periodot. I also used a few Swavroski pearls.


The pinecone flowers are Laura's idea, and the pinecones are from her yard! I'd never heard of this technique before, and they were so easy to make. All you need are pinecone "leaves" ripped off the cone, hot glue, lots of time, and shellac (I didn't have shellac so I used potter's glaze). I added a few touches of my own, namely the beads. I should do a tutorial...


You can't tell from these pictures, but the structure of the circlet's back is very complicated. Laura made yarn dreadlocks for her costume, so I used elastic cording to attach the biggest pinecone centerpiece to the edges of the circlet in the hopes that it would stretch to the right size. (It did!).

There are also several strands of chain dangling in the back. The center one has some beading in there.


Since M. clearly does not have on thick faux dreadlocks, the circlet hangs low on her head.




This is a torc necklace, also made of raw copper and glass beads. Someday I want to learn to solder and to get a torch for melting copper (our propane one is too weak)... I think that this turned out very well and extremely sturdy with wirewrapping, but it would be neat to experiment.

Sidetrack over. :) This is made with thick wire recycled from remnants of one of my dad's old electrical projects. I shaped it and then hammered all the wire to make the necklace very sturdy. A bit in the back was left unhammered and soft so that it can stretch a little bit so that it can be slid around the neck. It's not like the torc necklaces that Wikipedia talks about:

A torc, also spelled torq or torque, is a large, usually rigid, neck ring [pennannular, forming almost a complete ring with a hole in it] typically made from strands of metal twisted together. The great majority are open-ended at the front, although many seem designed for near-permanent wear and would have been difficult to remove. [...] The Celtic torc disappears in the Migration Period, but during the Viking Age, torc-style metal necklaces came back into fashion.

An upper-arm cuff with thick raw copper hammered to be sturdy. It's adjustable, and quite small because Laura is very slender.






I'm not sure what to call this (although a friend recommended that I name it "Awesome," heehee!) It is a swirly bracelet cuff that attached to a ring with a strand of beading. Kind of sort of like a handflower or slave bracelet, but not really...


The beading is attached with a removable hook, so the cuff can be worn on its own.

The cuff can be worn on the wrist (as shown to the left) and is long enough that is can be caught up in one of the adjustable rings and wrap around the fingers like a vine. Or, the bracelet cuff can be worn higher up the arm (above). Laura removed the green wirewrapped leaf and wore the cuff on her wrist without it wrapping over other fingers. (I hope that this makes sense and that I am not just rambling!)



This vine-like necklace was so fun. It's made with reversible beads and a ton of wire! The entire back just has strings of wirewrapped beading-- it was designed to go with the choker-length torc necklace and having leaves around the back of the neck would overwhelm it.



Fairy sandals, also known as foot thongs or barefoot sandals! These are so fun, but it was hard to size things properly so that the ankle width and length were right. I used a bit of elastic cord on the toe, but I tend to avoid that stuff as much as I can and the rest is beading wire and jump rings! I've got it all figured out now, and look forward to having the time to sit down and make some more.